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Me2/orchestra enlists musicians with mental illness

In this Sept 12, 2013 photo, provided by Me2/Orchestra, Ronald Braunstein conducts a rehearsal of the orchestra in South Burlington, Vt. Bipolar disorder slowed what might have been an explosive career for Braunstein. With his wife, French horn player Caroline Whiddon, Braunstein now runs the Me2/Orchestra, billed as “the world’s only classical music organization for individuals with mental illness and the people who support them.”

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt.
-- Ronald Braunstein's career as a musical conductor got off to a brilliant
start. He attended The Juilliard School, performed as a guest with top
orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic, and
won the prestigious Herbert von Karajan conducting competition in 1979.

But bipolar disorder slowed what might have been an
explosive career, including three five-year periods when, he said, he had
trouble merely getting out of bed.

He met his wife, French horn player Caroline Whiddon, when
she was working as manager of the Vermont Youth Orchestra and Braunstein was
hired as its music director. She had struggled with anxiety and depression.

Braunstein's bipolar disorder was a factor in his firing
from the youth orchestra in 2011, they said. They responded by forming the
Me2/orchestra — Me2, or "me, too," as in the shared struggles of its
musicians.

It's billed as "the world's only classical music
organization for individuals with mental illness and the people who support
them," a claim Whiddon said is based on her scouring of the Internet.
"I can't find anyone online doing anything close to what we're
doing," she said.

They're hoping a performance as part of First Night
Burlington, an annual New Year's Eve arts festival in Vermont's largest city,
will bring some attention to the 2-year-old ensemble.

Part of First Night's mission is to make arts accessible and
open for participation to a broad swath of the community, Executive Director
Tom Ayers said. So when Me2/orchestra applied, it was a perfect fit.

"It really goes to the core of our mission," Ayers
said.

That kind of exposure is what Whiddon, the orchestra's
44-year-old executive director, and Braunstein are looking for as they try to
use the group to give the public less fear and more awareness of mental
illness.

They said they took some of their inspiration from the Gay
Men's Chorus movement, which has singing groups in cities around the country.
What those groups did for gay men they want to do for people struggling with
mental illness.

"It's all about removing the stigma," Whiddon
said, later adding, "They inspired people around the country to get
together and support each other."

Braunstein, 58, said he sees his own illness as a key part
of his gift.

"I feel better able to hook into the grandiosity, the
excitement, the profoundness and the depths, more than a person who is without
bipolar," he said. "I really do get to the highs and lows, extremely
far apart."

Braunstein said that his favorite composer is Beethoven —
and that he feels a kinship with the 20th-century orchestra leader Otto
Klemperer. Both Beethoven and Klemperer are believed to have had bipolar
disorder.

Just one of the manifestations of his bipolar disorder: He
once got lost on his way to conducting a recent rehearsal in a room where he
had worked with the group a dozen times before.

But among the players in the Me2/orchestra, that was OK.
Acceptance more than perfection is reason for the group's existence. And the
musicians get to play for a conductor of high stature.

At a recent rehearsal, the orchestra was preparing for
concerts at Vermont's Woodside Juvenile Detention Center and the First Night
celebration on New Year's Eve in Burlington — the latter modeled after the
annual celebration in Vienna with the Radetzky March and Blue Danube Waltz.

Braunstein worked with the players on phrasing, articulation
and other technical aspects. During the first hour of rehearsal, the
improvements were obvious.

"You're following me too much," he told a
timpanist he thought was not keeping up with the beat.

"Can you do the four bars in one breath?" he asked
the horn players.

Double bassist Christa Mordoff, a youth counselor at the
juvenile detention center, said during a rehearsal break that her interest was
piqued in part by the upcoming concert at her workplace.

She said she was trying to take a realistic view of how
classical music would be received at the youth detention center. "Some
people are going to love it, and there are some people who are really negative
no matter what," she said.

But as he sat and waited for the rehearsal to resume, there
was no negativity getting to Jake Belcher. Belcher, 23, a violinist and math
student at the University of Vermont, said he was diagnosed 18 months ago with
anxiety and depression but took comfort in music.

The orchestra, he said, is "just an unspoken,
nonjudgmental zone where you can relax and know you're among good people."